Sunday, October 01, 2023 

Who knows if this animated adaptation of Tomb Raider'll be worth it?

And that's because it's on the one and only Netflix. Game Informer announces a new cartoon based on the famous video game series starring Lady Lara Croft is drawing near, but look what they're going to set it after:
As you can see in the teaser above, this take on Lara Croft seemingly follows the recent Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider reboot trilogy that concluded with 2018's Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Back in 2021, when Netflix announced Atwell's role in the show, it confirmed the series would take place after the events of that trilogy. Looking at this teaser, it's hard to say whether or not that's the case. But it sounds like we won't have to wait long to find out since Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is expected to hit Netflix soon.

In the meantime, check out the teaser trailer for Netflix's Devil May Cry anime series released today as well. In terms of new Tomb Raider games, the first three PlayStation 1 titles are getting remastered next year.
That remake series from the past decade was so woke in its own way, or just plain had dreadful artwork, why should we expect this cartoon with Japanese-style design to be any improvement? Or even expect the adaptation of Capcom's DMC series to be worth it? Remember, it's Netflix, the most woke streaming service around. Fandom Wire does note, however:
It has been stated that Crystal Dynamics wishes to bridge the divide between the original series of games and its reboot trilogy, and this new series will supposedly be part of that bridge. The next game in the franchise will utilize Unreal Engine 5.

Amazon Games is set to publish the next Tomb Raider game, which aims to include elements across all games across the franchise’s history and bring them all together as one unified timeline.

Until then, players can look forward to remasters of the original trilogy, set to be released next February for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
On this issue, how do we know the "remasters" won't be PC? I've noticed at times some USA-based video game manufacturers have of recent been censoring the contents in their older output, in some of the biggest acts of woke cowardice in this modern era, so based on how even TV ventures go these days, you can't be optimistic they'll be honest and faithful to the original material. That's why it's better to stick with the older editions. Also note how in the new cartoon, Lara's depicted using archery for weapons rather than bullet firearms. Some could reasonably wonder if such a change was made for the same reason WB produced recent Looney Tunes episodes depicting Elmer Fudd using blades rather than guns. In Tomb Raider's case, all that does is make for additionally lazy fare.

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Saturday, September 30, 2023 

How Larry Hama handles his friend requests on social media

Veteran writer Hama recently posted the following 2 items on Facebook: I think the part that's laughable and tiresome at this point is the worries about "homophobia". But maybe the main point is how Hama's the kind of leftist who just won't look beyond the kind of news sources he already does. He also posted: Well maybe those who believe the election was stolen 3 years ago, but why does he think literally everyone who believes Coronavirus was a hoax would unfriend him over that? And the obsession these people have with upholding LGBT ideology at all costs is getting tiresome. Hope he doesn't think abusing children with that kind of propaganda is okay. He also made sure to post the following hint at what he thinks of a certain recent presidential incumbent: Something tells me Hama is perpetuating cliches to be expected from leftists like himself, that Donald Trump doesn't uphold the Constitution. Tell us more please, though we could honestly do without this kind of tommyrot. I guess what's bewildering here is how liberal veterans like Hama who served in the army believe they know all that needs to be known, but not conservatives.

And if Hama rarely posts anything political, why did he have to sully the record with that more recent item? And if he's really worried about racism, does he also recognize leftists are fully capable of committing it too? Come to think of it, is he also as concerned about sexism? That remains to be seen. For now, I sure don't want to be a "friend" of his if he's going to be so obsessed with being a leftist ideologue, and even a "moralist". That kind of awkward approach never works out well.

Update: also look at who reposted one of his items, as seen in the following screencap:
Yup, Gail Simone, who's making clear her own left-leanings. But then, she's probably even more irrelevant now than Hama is.

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Japanese animation studio Ghibli will be sold to Nippon TV

The UK Guardian reports anime director Hayao Miyazaki's studio, Ghibli, will be sold to the majority ownership of Nippon TV, after his son decided not to try and run the company himself, following his dad's presumed retirement after making what'll presumably be his last production, The Boy and the Heron:
Weeks after the celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki made his long-awaited comeback, the studio he founded almost four decades ago has secured its long-term future, easing concerns over its struggle to find a successor.

Studio Ghibli said this week that the company would be acquired by the private broadcaster, Nippon TV, which promised to continue building on Ghibli’s global success. Miyazaki – widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest animators – founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, leading it to a string of successes, including an Oscar in 2003 for Spirited Away. The studio built a loyal following around the world with films like My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, while Miyazaki was nominated for two further Academy Awards – for Howl’s Moving Castle in 2006 and The Wind Rises in 2014 – the same year he was chosen to receive an honorary Oscar.
As mentioned once before, his previous film from 2014 glossed over the life of an aviation engineer who built the fighter plane models Japan imperial army used during WW2. But with all the leftists running the now irrelevant Oscars, no surprise they'd give him a prize he doesn't deserve.
The agreement with Nippon TV, which will become Ghibli’s biggest shareholder, came after Miyazaki, 82, and its president, 75-year-old Toshio Suzuki, failed to persuade Miyazaki’s son to take over the running of the studio.

“We have long struggled with the question: who will be the successor,” Studio Ghibli said in a joint statement with Nippon TV.

Miyazaki’s son, Goro, has repeatedly been mentioned as a possible successor, but has “firmly rejected the idea,” the statement said. “It is too much to shoulder by myself. It is better to leave it to somebody else,” Goro, an anime director, said, according to the statement.
Sounds like Miyazaki Sr. is the only justification for the studio's existence. Ghibli may continue under its own name while Nippon TV retains new ownership, but it wouldn't be surprising if it becomes even less stellar than it was when Miyazaki Sr. was in charge, and while some of his films are impressive, it's a terrible shame he soured the better impact with his own leftist politics. Without him, it'll probably become like just about any other studio, assuming it continues much longer. For now, if Miyazaki is really retiring, it's for the best.

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Friday, September 29, 2023 

Comic podcasts gain prominence

Fast Company is talking about comics-dedicated podcasts, and there's plenty at this point spotlighting various Marvel/DC related products, along with indies:
Where’s a fan supposed to get their comics fix? More and more, it seems that comic publishers are turning to podcasts, transforming a primarily visual medium into something that’s compelling in sound alone.

Comics have always relied on visuals to build their complex worlds, but a podcast’s voice acting, sound effects, and music transport can just as readily transport listeners to the world these characters inhabit. Today’s comic book podcasts are an intentional, richly produced series of stories, throwbacks to the radio dramas your grandparents used to listen to, like Superman or Little Orphan Annie. If it all sounds very anti-visual, it is, but you can hear and feel the action.
So some are trying to tell stories reminiscent of radio serials of the early 20th century? I'm sure there's some potential there, but what's really impressive is that there are some podcasters who're willing to acknowledge what a mess Marvel's become under Disney ownership:
Over a year, if you heard one episode of each of those Marvel podcasts per week, you’d still have some catching up to do. Sure, some are less than an hour in length, but getting in those Marvel podcast series on top of the latest Disney+ series—be it She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel or Moon Knight or Loki or Hawkeye or WandaVision or Secret Invasion—can be exhausting, to say the least. Critic, educator, and filmmaker Brandon Wilson, who’s given comic book podcasts a chance, feels frustrated with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Disney+ streaming.

“Disney+ is the worst thing to happen to Marvel, it’s been terrible, it’s diluted the brand and forced them to tell stories that didn’t need to be told,”
he says. The content overload has cheapened Marvel’s storytelling, he argues. “It’s like a parent giving their kid chocolate; give them enough until they get sick, or tell them they’ve had enough. There is a getting sick equivalent here,” he says. Wilson, who’s an Angelino frequently in his car, has appreciated the opportunity to engage with something different—and not the Disney+ wealth of content—via podcasts. Although he’s not actively listening to anything now, he did dabble in the Old Man Star-Lord series, “That was one of my first times listening to a narrative podcast.”
Amazing. But anybody who looks harder under a magnifying glass would know Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada were the worst things to happen to Marvel at the turn of the century, with Axel Alonso following up on their worst manipulations and alterations a decade later when he became EIC. Anybody who overlooks those sad moments in history, including - but not limited to - the desecration of Spider-Man's world, isn't proving they're dedicated enough to the art form. On which note:
And yet, there’s no better time for comic book fans, especially when it comes to podcasts, “The coolest things are happening in this space,” said Gateley. Scripted podcasts are all about storytelling, and Spotify is keen to “create sonic cinema” with writing and structure, voice talent and music, as well as sound effects, producing a unique audio experience. David S. Goyer, famous for the Blade Trilogy as well as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, created the Batman Unburied podcast. “There’s a rich history of Batman renditions,” said Gateley, “bringing in David S. Goyer to create something for us has been exciting.” From Brandon Wilson’s point of view, it makes sense to have filmmakers in the podcast space. “They know how to tell a story. If they’re worth their salt, they love the challenge to give up the one thing, the visuals, and now with the podcast, all you’re doing is audio, there’s a lot of headaches you don’t have. I imagine there’s a great liberation.”
And on this, I must ask, modern issues aside, what makes a filmmaker such a big deal, but not a comics writer proper? Consider there's only so many recent moviemakers who've produced the wokest content, exploiting veteran creations and properties for conveying their PC visions, with Eternals, Blue Beetle, Thor 4 and Black Adam presenting at least a few examples, it makes little sense to say they know storytelling, and the perpetuation of the claim Batman's historical renditions are massively rich is also absurd. What about the time in the late 1980s when Jason Todd was mishandled? Or how about the Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive crossover from 2002, which was dreadful and superfluous? Or any other forms of PC/social justice propaganda that've come along ever since to litter the pages? It's insulting to the intellect how they gloss over any and all mistakes made with the Masked Manhunter in history, not to mention how they keep touting Batman at Superman's expense.

So I realized this item winds up being just another putting more emphasis on movie adaptations in the end than it actually does on comics. And what good is that? None, decidedly. Maybe worst though, is that chances professional and veteran comics writers who understand what can make the material work best won't get a spot on these podcasts run by the publishers themselves. Not even the long blacklisted Chuck Dixon, who wrote some of the last Batman stories worth reading. In that case, what good are some of the podcast projects?

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Wednesday, September 27, 2023 

Martin Scorsese reiterates his concerns about Marvel movies

Veteran filmmaker Martin Scorsese, whose latest movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, is premiering, was interviewed by Gentleman's Quarterly, and both the journalist and Scorsese revived his worries about the bad influence the major Marvel movies could have on everybody's perception of what moviemaking is all about. Though his citation of a certain other filmmaker involved in comics movies dampens the impact:
Scorsese is often cast as a retrograde defender of how things used to be, in part because of his work with the Film Foundation, a nonprofit he helped found and which has since preserved and restored hundreds of films, but it’s not exactly that simple. He believes that movie theaters are not dying, precisely. “I think there will always be theatrical, because people want to experience this thing together,” Scorsese said. “But at the same time, the theaters have to step up to make them places where people will want to go and enjoy themselves or want to go and see something that moves them.”

Here I suggested to Scorsese that the movie theaters could show only the films that Hollywood actually made, and therein might lie the problem—that if Hollywood makes nothing but comic book and franchise movies, and certain segments of the audience don’t want to see those films, then nothing is going to get them to a movie theater. I feel bad about having done this, since Scorsese’s skeptical comments about Marvel and comic book films in the past have attracted a lot of vitriol, and…here I am, inviting more vitriol for Martin Scorsese. Please complain to me and not him.

But he does see trouble in the glut of franchise and comic book entertainment that currently makes up much of what you can see in a theater. “The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” Scorsese said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are.”

I think people already think that.

They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.” Cinema could be anything, Scorsese said; it didn’t just have to be serious. Some Like It Hot—that was cinema, for instance. But: “I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema.”

Again, you don’t need to say this.

“No, I don’t want to say it. But what I mean is that, it’s manufactured content. It’s almost like AI making a film. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you? Aside from a kind of consummation of something and then eliminating it from your mind, your whole body, you know? So what is it giving you?”
Scorsese needn't be too concerned by now. The Marvel movies are largely in decline, having succumbed to the pagan deities of wokeness, and the DC movies have easily fared worse, because WB was clueless how to handle them (and they've become just as plagued with wokeism). But that's an interesting way of looking at things - manufactured AI has taken the place of science fiction cinema, and there is a valid concern simultaneously that new generations are going to think comics adaptations is all their is to movies, though that's likely because filmmakers and marketers are clueless to boot, and don't know how to convince the audiences to check out their stuff too.

But why specifically Chris Nolan being somebody to object to too many comics movies? He was practically the driving force behind at least a few of them over a dozen years ago, having helmed the 3 Batman movies of the times, and IIRC, had production credit on Man of Steel by Zack Snyder. Scorsese, in his advanced age, is sure missing quite a bit. Make what you will of Nolan, but it's doubtful he'd speak out against a genre or theme he was instrumental in moving ahead, and influencing where it'd arrive now.

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Tuesday, September 26, 2023 

Netflix is no place for even an India-themed film based on Archie

The BBC is writing about a musical film produced on Netflix, said to be based on Archie, or an India-based variation on the comics, also telling the history of how Archie comics became significant in India, and predictably, this article ends up being sugarcoated about what went wrong with how comics like these were produced. First:
The comic is back in the news, with Netflix set to launch The Archies, a musical adapted from the comic, later this year.

The coming-of-age film is based in 1960s India and explores teenage themes of love, heartbreak and rebellion through the lens of the Anglo-Indian community. The trailer has already been viewed over 800,000 times on YouTube.

The news of the film has sparked a lot of conversation among fans of the comic.

Some say the comic will benefit from having a more Indian context, while others have criticised the film for having characters that "don't look Indian". While the jury's still out on the film, there's no denying the influence Archie Comics once had over city-bred youngsters in India.
But Netflix isn't the place to broadcast it. They've produced so much content that's potentially PC-woke, and why should we assume this couldn't screw up the same way? This BBC article certainly does by the time it gets around to the following history:
By the time the comic became popular in India, it had gone out of fashion in America. Comics were popular in US in the 1950s and 60s - in fact, Archie made his debut in December 1941 - but sales began dropping towards the end of the century.

Publishers have tried to reinvent Archie Comics by adding diverse characters, including the first gay character; exploring darker plotlines tied to current issues like gun control, body shaming, recession and even the challenges of sustaining long-term relationships like marriage.

The art has evolved - the highly stylised drawings of the 50s and 60s morphed into softer, more realistic cartoonish drawings in the 90s. In the 2000s, artists experimented with digital artwork to give the comic a more modern look.
Umm, doesn't this give strong hints why the Archie franchise plummeted by the turn of the century? They resorted to LGBT ideology, and last time I looked, were still fully willing to remain nailed tight on it, and darkness is another letdown. The part about gun control is also quite telling where things have been going lately. And by body shaming, do they mean obesity? Let's be clear. Obesity is nothing to mock. But if we're not even allowed to criticize how unhealthy it can be, especially for women, then it's hard to comprehend what this is all about. Though the part about marriage is certainly eyebrow raising. In an age where marriage is being devastated all over the place, who knows if they even take an objective approach to that?
Some like Reneysh Vittal say they miss the playfulness and simplicity of the older Archie Comics. "Our generation was lucky enough to experience life just before the internet took over and for me, Archie Comics will always represent that pre-internet age of innocence," he says.
Regrettably, with the way wokeism took over their company, right down to the horror-themed stories they emphasized in recent years, there's no chance they'll ever be willing to return to a format free of the politicized themes they've forced onto the franchise. Maybe one day, if it all becomes public domain, somebody will have what it takes to conceive Archie stories in better taste than seen now. But that day is, most unfortunately, still a long way off. And again, it's not a good idea to produce movie adaptations on a network like Netflix.

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Monday, September 25, 2023 

University paper perpetuates use of woke description while reporting on National Comic Book Day

The Mesquite wrote a report on National Comic Books and Graphic Novels Day, which has a convention at Texas A&M in San Antonio, and ruined everything by making use of a description that's unpopular with the Latin-speaking crowd:
According to Kimberly Grotewold, an education librarian, the University Library got a one-time grant in March 2022 for $2,500 to buy additional Latinx comics and graphic novels.

“We had comics and graphic novels and that kind of collection, but it was what we call interfiled. It was spread out through the collection based on the subject matter it was dealing with so not specifically on it being comics, graphic novels so we did two things essentially,” Grotewold said. “We pulled the comics and graphic novels into a separate collection, and we noticed that there were some that had Latinx themes or characters or creators. Then we wrote the grant to buy specifically titles that were either Latinx stories, had characters, or were by people of Latinx heritage who actually created the comic books.”

The Latinx collection contains over 80 comics and graphic novels that are by Hispanic and Latinx authors and artists and/or feature Hispanic and Latinx characters.
It's been at least a few years already, and this college paper still doesn't grasp that "Latinx" is an unpopular woke phrase? Just shameful. It's deeply insulting, and look how they even go so far to make it seem as though "Hispanic" and "Latinx" are two different communities! What they're doing is insulting to the intellect, and proves why college papers can be potentially worse than commercial newspapers. If the university approves of this, they're unsuited to host this convention any more than are to give it news coverage.

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Sunday, September 24, 2023 

More woke exploitation of Ari Folman's GN adaptation of Anne Frank's diary in USA schools

JTA/Israel National News tells of a schoolteacher in Texas who was dismissed by her district for making use of leftist animator/illustrator Ari Folman and David Polonsky's GN based on Anne Frank's Holocaust diary, which was developed more for the sake of foisting explicit material upon underaged children in schools and LGBT fetishes than actual history education:
A middle school teacher in a district outside Houston, Texas, has been fired reportedly for reading a sexually explicit passage from Anne Frank’s diary out loud to eighth-grade students, the district told local news.

The passage came from a 2018 graphic version of the diary by the world-famous Jewish Holocaust victim that restored some portions of the initial book that had been cut from the most well-known editions.

“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” has also been at the center of several other recent book-related controversies in public schools: It was briefly pulled from another Texas district, permanently removed from a Florida district and has spent several months under review at another Florida district; a Republican Jewish lawmaker in Florida has called it “Anne Frank pornography.” [...]

In the book, adapted by Ari Folman and David Polonsky, a passage dated March 24, 1944, depicts Anne describing male and female genitalia, including descriptions of female genitalia and pubic hair. The words are really Anne’s own, and appear in her initial handwritten draft of the diary. The passage comes immediately after a passage describing “the sound of gunfire” as Nazi soldiers attacked Allied forces parachuting out of a crashing plane.

“It’s bad enough she’s having them read this for an assignment, but then she also is making them read it aloud and making a little girl talk about feeling each other’s breasts and when she sees a female she goes into ecstasy, that’s not OK,” a parent of twin boys in the class told local news. The parent was referring to another passage from the book, in which Anne briefly describes her latent feelings toward another girl, that some conservative parents and activists say they find objectionable.
What's described really is sick and perverse, and the worst part is that when it's as forced previous descriptions point out, it actually makes Anne Frank look bad. What were Folman and Polonsky thinking? And they're not the only ones to wonder about:
The Anne Frank Fonds, the Switzerland-based foundation that oversees the copyright to Frank’s diary and authorized the new graphic adaptation, has defended the work in the past. “We consider the book of a 12-year-old girl to be appropriate reading for her peers,” board member Yves Kugelmann has told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Jewish books including “Anne Frank’s Diary,” “Maus” and “The Fixer” have become frequently ensnared in a broader, conservative-led effort to purge schools of material that activists deem inappropriate, largely for content involving sexuality, gender identity and race. Teachers are increasingly facing censures and firings for including controversial books, including by race writer Ta-Nahisi Coates, in class.
Oh, so far-left Coates, one of the worst things that could happen to Marvel/DC, also has books with potentially inappropriate content turning up in class? Another reason for concern. For now, it sure is disturbing the foundation named after Anne is okay with this, and apparently sees nothing wrong with fetishizing a graphic allusion to lesbianism.

National Review addressed the latest scandal involving this GN as a form of betrayal:
The most recent episode — which is likely not over, since the fired teacher has reportedly hired an attorney — is being portrayed as conservatives wanting to ban Anne’s diary entirely, when in fact the dispute was over the graphic adaptation. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, tweeted, “Texas teacher fired for reading Diary of Anne Frank to class-THIS Speaks for itself!!!” Ben Collins, a reporter with NBC News, tweeted to his more than 400,000 followers that “this is the apology a Houston school district sent to parents for assigning an illustrated version of Anne Frank’s Diary to students” and that “the teacher was fired for assigning it,” with an image attached. When a reply pointed out that the objections were not to the diary itself, he responded, “who gives a sh*t.”

Generally, I’m against sanitizing the contents of books. I find the aversion to the sexual passages in the diary naïve: It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a teenage girl wrote about undergoing puberty in her diary. Still, I think parents could reasonably argue that schools should assign an edition of the diary without descriptions of puberty, and that such an edition wouldn’t detract from the larger educational mission of studying the Holocaust.

But whatever one thinks about presenting students with a revised or an unrevised text of Anne Frank’s diary, that is completely distinct from whether middle-school students benefit from reading a graphic-novel version for class.

Why were eighth graders assigned to read a graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary rather than her own writing, whether the latter contained the sexual passages or not
? Anne Frank received her diary on her 13th birthday. Students in eighth grade are usually ages 13 or 14. If she was old enough to write the diary, then they are old enough to read it.

The graphic adaptation betrays Anne by reducing her hardship to cartoonish drawings with captions, and it betrays teenage students by assuming they aren’t emotionally and intellectually mature enough to grapple with the material. Perhaps most egregiously, it’s a simplification that dishonors the care that Anne devoted to her writing. The issue is not whether teenagers are prompted to engage with her explicit passages; it’s whether they’re prompted to engage with her writing at all.
And if it's far more about the graphic references to sexuality than Anne's wartime experiences themselves, that's minimizing the seriousness of the issue, and offensive to her memory. And it is absurd that the GN is considered the edition to read to students, but not the original plain-text diary itself. The MSM should be ashamed of themselves for making this all into a case of conservative hysteria. Mainly because Front Page Magazine has a troubling report about something occurring in Canada - and very likely the USA too - that these same sources promoting Folman's GN aren't discussing themselves:
The Diary of a Young Girl by Holocaust victim Anne Frank, the massively popular Harry Potter series, and the Newberry Medal-winning novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry about racial conflict in 1930s Mississippi are some notable examples of books that 10th grader Reina Takata can no longer find in her public high school library in Ontario, Canada. Why not? Because those titles were culled as part of a new “equity-based” weeding process implemented by the Peel District School Board (PDSB) last spring, leaving library shelves as bare as supermarket shelves in Biden’s America.

Miss Takata told CBC Toronto that the shelves at Erindale Secondary School were full of books as recently as May, but gradually began to empty out. When she returned to school in the fall, “I came into my school library and there are rows and rows of empty shelves with absolutely no books.” (Takata herself took the photo above, of the bookshelves in her Mississauga high school’s library.) She estimates that more than half of her school’s library books are gone.

Libraries across Canada and in the United States have long followed standard weeding plans to dispose of damaged or outdated books; this is understandable and reasonable. But Reina Takata and many other students and parents are concerned that this new process emphasizing the leftist buzzwords “equity” and “inclusion” seems to have led some schools to remove thousands of books simply because they were published in 2008 or earlier. [...]

For all of the Left’s shrill, false charges that conservatives are frenzied, anti-intellectual book-banners, it is the totalitarians of wokeness who are actively engaging in the online stealth editing of classic fiction, the mob cancellation of insufficiently woke authors, and the quiet culling of books from library shelves to accommodate the ideological requirements of “equity” and “inclusion.”

This neo-Marxist agenda is being perpetrated, meanwhile, at the same time that its fanatical activists are hell-bent on ensuring that school libraries stock pornographic works of gender ideology aimed at prematurely instilling a sexual consciousness in very young schoolchildren. Parents who object to this blatant grooming are smeared as bigots and investigated by federal law enforcement as domestic terror threats, because leftists don’t believe in parental rights; they believe the State should be raising our children.

Although the aforementioned “equity” book weeding policy was implemented in Canada, make no mistake – a similar woke targeting of the West’s literary heritage will be coming to school libraries in America, if it hasn’t already, and possibly even to public libraries and bookstores as well. And this agenda to erase the West’s literary heritage is only going to intensify unless and until it is stopped in its tracks by a determined, righteously fearless opposition.
So while all this hypocritical fuss over the banning of a gross GN allegedly focused on Anne Frank's been going on in the USA, over in Canada, the regular text-based printings of her diary have been banned in Ontario, which once again is giving signs its one of the worst places you could possibly be in the great white north. Something tells me that, if this happened in the USA's side of the border, it wouldn't elicit even a whisper from the MSM. And is the Anne Frank Foundation okay with what's going on in Canadian libraries? If they don't object, that's a sad sign they've become woke in their own way, which is throughly unbecoming of anybody who claims to be safeguarding history.

A writer at the Federalist who's worked as a teacher addressed the topic too, and says the Houston teacher who caused this flap deserved to be booted:
I’ll admit, as an English teacher myself, I sympathized with this woman at first, thinking she must’ve been caught in the crosshairs of some vindictive parents or administrators who disagreed with her politics or lifestyle. I’ve witnessed this and can attest the attacks can be from both sides, and it gets ugly.

However, once I made it past the headline, it became apparent why this teacher was removed from the classroom. First, the book wasn’t included in the class’s approved curriculum. Second, the book included sexually explicit content that was wildly inappropriate for a middle school English class.

At best, the teacher was incompetent and thought using this book would help her struggling readers understand Anne Frank’s story, not thinking about the material in it. At worst, the teacher knew what was in the book, thought it would be good for her students, and wanted to rebel against prescribed standards by going off-script.

For most people, all this might be confusing. After all, how can Anne Frank’s diary be inappropriate when so many millions of students read the book and missed these salacious descriptions? This is because the original version published in 1947, which most people have read, doesn’t include Frank’s descriptions of puberty, genitalia, and lesbian desires, which were in the original diary. For whatever reason, the graphic novel version published in 2017 includes these missing portions, as the Daily Mail’s writeup on this story shows.

That said, this doesn’t make it a bad book. Puberty and sexual desires are normal aspects of young adulthood, and many adolescent readers may take solace in the fact that Frank felt the same things some of them do.

But this kind of content does make it a bad book for whole-class reading in a middle school English class. In this context, the teacher is effectively acting as an authority on sensitive topics, taking it upon herself to introduce, explain, and evaluate what Frank is talking about.

Instead of students encountering these subjects when they’re ready, they are forced to adopt and apply their teacher’s interpretation. Otherwise, they may be punished or suffer a bad grade.

Naturally, this makes for an extremely uncomfortable classroom environment. In addition to assigning the graphic novel to her classes, this teacher was making her students read these parts aloud, which is extremely questionable. Why would she ask 13-year-old boys and girls to read lines about how Frank feels about menstruating or how she wants to grope her friend? Either she gets a perverted thrill from this, or she wants to somehow de-stigmatize or normalize this subject matter for her young students — two things most people would consider sexual grooming.
As noted before, such graphic descriptions also run the danger of making Anne Frank look bad, no matter how young her age. I should also note that my father, who'd read the diary compilation years before, once stated that Anne had told there was a boy she'd loved, which seems to be lost in all this controversy. As a result, it compounds the suspicions this GN by Folman and Polonsky was written more for the sake of promoting the LGBT agenda, exploiting a historic figure to advance their goals, which is monumentally offensive.
Overall, far from condemning the administrators and parents as bullies and book banners, we can say that they did the right thing in dismissing a teacher who crossed more than a few lines. Not only did she neglect to teach age-appropriate content to her classes, but she corrupted her students, doing untold damage to their mental and emotional health.
Exactly, and she should apologize, but probably won't. There's only so much of this horrific perversion going about in north America now, and it's doing severe damage to children, and little or nothing to provide them with an education, history-based or otherwise. And do any of these pseudo-educators actually care about historical figures who were victims of racially-motivated hatred and totalitarianism? It's doubtful they do. Illustrated medium can have have its advantages for telling history as much as escapist entertainment. But the way this whole subject has been handled by ideologues at schools most definitely wasn't good, and did more harm than good to comicdom, along with Anne Frank's memory.

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About me

  • I'm Avi Green
  • From Jerusalem, Israel
  • I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.
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